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VMware Surprises Few With New Hybrid Cloud Service

VMware's new service automatically extends the company's existing private-cloud software to public clouds.

PALO ALTO, Calif.—To the surprise of no one who follows VMware on a regular basis, the world's largest virtualization software provider came out May 21 with a hybrid cloud service version of its vCloud management suite.

The EMC-owned company introduced its new vCloud Hybrid Service, an infrastructure-as-a service (IaaS) cloud built atop its own vSphere platform, operated by VMware itself and delivered by its service-provider partners.

VMware Senior Vice President of Hybrid Cloud Services Bill Fathers told reporters at a May 21 news conference that the new service automatically extends its existing private-cloud software to public clouds.

"Customers can use the same VMware skills, tools, networking and security models they deploy in their on-premises IT infrastructures in off-premises cloud environments," Fathers said.

Further reading

Will Be Sold Through Partners

vCloud Hybrid Services will be sold through the company's partners and be compatible with all other VMware-based cloud services. Plus, the new offerings can be sold the same way as on-premises VMware licenses with a standard SKU, with partners maintaining their billing relationship with customers.

Cloud service providers also will have the opportunity to provide complementary, value-added services or to simply add vCloud Hybrid Service to their portfolios, Fathers said.

VMware vCloud Hybrid Service will be available in June through an early access program, with general availability in the U.S. expected in the third quarter of 2013, Fathers said.

Two Versions Will Be Available

The new offerings will be available in two models:

--vCloud Hybrid Service Dedicated Cloud, which will provide physically isolated and reserved compute resources sold on an annual term with pricing starting at 13 cents per hour for a fully protected, fully redundant 1GB virtual machine with one processor; and

--vCloud Hybrid Service Virtual Private Cloud, which has a multitenant compute resource model but with dedicated allocations for customers and will be sold on a monthly term with pricing starting at 4.5 cents an hour for a fully protected, fully redundant 1GB virtual machine with one processor.

"Overall, this appears to be a carefully designed and implemented solution set, but how well is VMware's new vCloud Hybrid Service likely to do in the marketplace?" Pund-IT principal analyst Charles King wrote in a media advisory.

"Pretty well, in our estimation. Familiarity is a powerful force in IT, especially among large organizations, and we expect enterprises currently running VMware (which is to say, virtually all enterprises) will find the new offerings intriguing and even heartening in ways other cloud services are not," King said.

Chris J. Preimesberger

Chris J. Preimesberger is Editor-in-Chief of eWEEK and responsible for all the publication's coverage. In his 13 years and more than 4,000 articles at eWEEK, he has distinguished himself in reporting...

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